Cricket World Cup: Reasons to be happier for India as they advance to the semifinals. As the match approached the finish line, the DJ at M Chinnaswamy Stadium played vintage music to keep the almost full house entertained. “Ek, do, teen,” the Tezaab movie from 1988 blasted over the speakers.
Rohit Sharma would have been thinking along similar lines at some point as well. Just as their coach Rahul Dravid had wanted on the eve of the match, he would have quietly murmured, “nine done, ten and eleven waiting,” as India ticked off another box, this time against the Netherlands.
They have already completed half of the task with nine wins out of nine, the most for an Indian team in a World Cup edition. There’s no better time than this Wednesday at the Wankhede for the semi-final matchup versus New Zealand.
The Men in Blue towered above the thick cracker-dust-scented haze that pervaded Bengaluru on a Sunday evening.
But even though they amassed 410/4 at the bat thanks to centuries from KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer—two batters whose availability as World Cup starts was questioned due to injuries—this wasn’t as smooth as some of their prior victories.
The bowling unit, which looked to be taking it easy here and needed 47.5 overs to bowl the Dutch for 250, was largely to blame. They had wasted little time in blowing away teams like England, Sri Lanka, and South Africa under the lights.
Maybe the Indian attack didn’t plan to go all out and was reserving all of its energy for Wednesday, with a massive sum on board that was beyond the Netherlands’ capacity. They were clearly not playing with the same intensity as they had in the preceding eight games.
With just 48 hours till the semi-final, Virat Kohli, Shubman Gill, Suryakumar Yadav, and Rohit Sharma bowled a combined 7.4 overs on the evening, demonstrating their desire to save their fast bowlers for New Zealand.
However, team captain Rohit Sharma expressed his satisfaction with the team’s performance.”Since the competition began, we have focused solely on one game at a time. We always wanted to keep an eye on the future.
If we play through to the end, the competition will last 11 games. It was critical to dissect and concentrate on it. We just talked about one game. We perform to the diverse places we are in, and that is exactly what we did.
We’re happy with the nine games we’ve played. Extremely methodical from the first game to this one,” he remarked.
He also pondered how other people had risen to various difficulties. “A variety of people have stood up, raised their hands, and completed the task. Everyone aspired to assume the duty. It was difficult to play in many locations. We did a great job adapting.
We played four straight chase games to begin the competition, and when we had to bat first, the pacers and spinners performed admirably. The outcome is important to maintain the energy in the dressing room, he said.
On a calm surface, however, India were brutal with the bat. As has been the case throughout the competition, Rohit and Gill, the openers, set the tone early, hitting 91 runs in the opening powerplay.
After that, the Dutch were essentially on a leather hunt. Even though Rohit, Gill, and Kohli—all of whom appeared likely to reach three figures—threw away their wickets in the middle overs, KL Rahul and Shreyas Iyer took advantage of the remaining overs to post two distinct hundreds.
